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I work on a project that includes many u"string" in its codebase,

I want to know if I can safely remove the u in front of all those strings knowing that the project will only use Python 3 from now on (it used to use both python 2 and 3)

I have only one source that says :

"The string prefix u is used exclusively for compatibility with Python 2."

Eli O.
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    Yes, in Python 3 the u is redundant: [What's the u prefix in a Python string?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2464959/whats-the-u-prefix-in-a-python-string) – mkrieger1 Dec 26 '22 at 16:33

3 Answers3

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Yes. I think you can. Unicode strings are not necessary in Python 3, because all strings are stored as Unicode by default, as stated here.

Florian EDEMESSI
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Yes, you can. The sentence you quoted means that u"string" is in python3 only for compatibility.

In python 3 all strings are unicode so the u is redundant.

kosciej16
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I did run test using 2to3 tool and it did change u-string to normal string, ustring.py file before

x = u"string"
print(x)

after 2to3 -w ustring.py

x = "string"
print(x)
Daweo
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